I'd not posted an update since summer of last year, when I was working on a screen adaptation of my sister's novella, "A Sword in Hand." The reading of the 1st draft script went well, and I got good feedback. However, this past year and a half, I've been preoccupied with another fantasy narrative.

In late 2022, when the Amazon series, "Rings of Power," debuted, both its promotion and criticism prompted a thought experiment centering around the question, "What would I do if handed a billion bucks to depict the 2nd Age of J. R. R. Tolkien's vast legendarium on the screen?" From there came a torrent of ideas, and I banged out a 1st draft treatment in a day at the encouragement of a close friend. After that initial draft, what followed were over 200 pages of notes, as the ideas and theories kept coming, and deeper research into the lore--"The Fall of Númenor" (Tolkien, edited by Brian Sibley) was especially helpful.

Now, I'm finally done with an updated draft of a treatment of this epic, 13-episode limited series. I sought to adhere closer to the lore and timeline than RoP, while expanding it with storylines in the places Prof. Tolkien wrote less about, such as Rhûn, Khand, Harad and Umbar, so that stars from Africa, Asia and the Middle East could play characters plausibly populating Middle Earth during this period of time. Tolkien, himself, surmised that Sauron didn't get as many men of the East and South as he'd wanted to fight on his behalf, which prompted me to ask why, and a subsequent theory as an answer came to be the basis of the narratives in those parts of Middle Earth.

It's an extremely ambitious project with various hurdles to clear before it could be realized. I'm not yet sure whether this has been an exercise in madness or if it actually has potential to be produced. Here's the project's title and the titles of the episodes. (I may add descriptions of the episodes in the comments, later.) Here goes:

Lord of the Rings: an Account of Arda in The Second Age

Ep. 1 - Many Migrations

Ep. 2 - The Bringer of Gifts

Ep. 3 - The Forge of Celebrimbor

Ep. 4. - Númenor

Ep. 5 - The Year of Dread

Ep. 6 - The Dwarven Rings

Ep. 7 - The Blue Wizards

Ep. 8 - Corsairs of Umbar

Ep. 9 - Barad-dûr

Ep. 10 - Elves and Men

Ep. 11 - The Mumakil

Ep. 12 - The Siege of Mordor

Ep. 13 - Epilogue: Isildur's Bane